Monday, December 8, 2014

Quoted: Doris Lessing on Political Correctness

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they seem themselves as antiracists, or feminists, or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers. -- Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism

This is a good, reasoned, still relevant comment on -- gah, I hate this word -- political correctness from one Doris Lessing. PC has become untouchable as of late, and associated with a kind of privileged "feminizas controlling me" trollishness, that's it's nearly impossible to make a reasonable argument against it. Call-outs too easily turn into power games, and it's hard to be the lone voice of dissent.